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Shorter Rules

St Basil the Great, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1925

Rule 4: If Any Man Bears Hardly Upon the Brethren for Small Sins, Saying, You Should…

Since the Lord affirmed that “one jot or one tittle shall not pass from the law till all be fulfilled,”¹ and declared that “every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment,”² nothing must be despised as small. For he who despises a thing is despised by it.”³ Besides, what sin will any one dare to call small after the apostle’s declaration: “Through thy transgression of the law dost thou dishonour God?’⁴ But if the sting of death is sin, not this or that, but, as it is not defined, clearly every sin, he who is silent lacks compassion, not he who rebukes; just as he who leaves the poison in him who is bitten by a venomous beast, not he that takes it out, is the merciless one. Moreover he destroys love. For it is written: “He that spareth the rod, hateth his son; but he that loveth him, chastiseth him diligently.”⁵

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